Good road records mean that they could be a force at anybody's crib and 27 is very impressive especially vs the eastern teams that all struggled on the road. With the Magic and then the Heat/Bulls being the Pistons next two opponents, the road record will come in handy, but taking care of business at home throughout the eastern playoffs is all that is needed to return the finals and shock the world as they did in 2004 vs one the western powers. Of course that was the scenario last year too.

Speaking of getting to the finals, 53-29 is a good record, but did you know that of the Pistons five trips to the finals, their regular season for three of those seasons was 54-28 (in 88, 04 and 05). Going with percentages, a 54th win this season may have guaranteed a trip to the finals this year??.

For those of you interested, when they won the title in the other two trips to the finals, they won 63 regular season games in 1989 and 59 in 1990.

But when, of all 16 playoff teams, only the Nets, Magic, Lakers and Nuggets have a worse home record...

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It is annoying, and potentially worrying, but let's think about it this way: would you rather be worried about your team's tendency to slack off at home, while being confident in their road record, or would you prefer to be confident about taking care of business at home while hoping that they can somehow elevate their caliber of play on the road in between the regular season and the playoffs? Option (a) seems like a better way to go into the playoffs to me.